Louisiana Voice

That’s more than eight years that he has held the office of Louisiana’s junior U.S. Senator without having even once rubbed elbows with the great unwashed – us. You’d think he would make the occasional visit to places like Shreveport, Monroe, Alexandria, Lake Charles, Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Orleans or Houma/Thibodaux to learn up close and personal what’s on the minds of Louisiana voters. After all, we are a red state, and he eems to believe that he is Donald Trump’s proxy (when actually, it’s Jeff Landry) so it would seem that he would be facing friendly crowds. Oh, come election time, we will see him on TV addressing concerned voters who, in reality, are paid actors on a tightly-controled set, ostensibly hanging onto every word the senator utters.

There are those, however, who would really love to ask him why he voted to confirm the likes of FBI Director Kash Patel or Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But alas, he remains aloof. No one answers his office phones in Louisiana. Instead, we get a message that he’s “meeting with other constituents.” How stupid does he think we are? He’s “meeting with other consituents” if you call him at 3:00 a.m. And if you e-mail him about an issue, you will get a generic response that comes nowhere close to addressing your concerns. He is, simply put, the K-Tel records of U.S. senators – a knock-off of the original, a cheap copy.

His responses to e-mail inquiries calls to mind the old joke about the guy who, riding in a sleeper car on a train trip, encountered bed bugs and fired off an irate letter to the railroad company. A couple of weeks later he receives a response, an apology and a promise to fumigate the train car. But in opening the envelope, a note falls out. He picks it up and read the message: “Send the bed bug letter to this person.”